Monday, November 22, 2010

Our family is already benefiting from the Health Care Reform Act. Our 21 year-old son stopped being eligible under the old plan, but we can now have him covered thanks to the new law.

Our family is also starting to pay for the Health Care Reform Act. I got this memo from our benefits department:

The purpose of this memo is to provide you information on the medical rates for next year... The premiums for certain medical insurance plans are increasing significantly for 2011. This increase is due to medical trend, increased costs to meet requirements for the Healthcare Reform Act, and primarily, to the high dollar amount of medical claims in these plans over the last year...

We had the "Chevy" plan, so the increase seems fair since we are getting the added value of coverage for an additional dependent.

The peasants are revolting over the increase in the Cadillac plan.

I don't know what percentage of these increases is due to the new law. I know that most of the increase in the Cadillac plan is due to simple economics and not due to the new law. Our company is trying to ween people off of a local health provider (covered by the "Cadillac") whose costs have risen significantly. The "Cheap Cadillac" plan very explicitly excludes the evil, costly provider.

Surprisingly, the out-of-pocket cost of Kaiser (yet another option) went unchanged, so Kaiser is getting our business this year for the first time. Free market forces are still working, in spite of all the rules and regulations.